So Far, a Chanteuse Mainly for the Camera

The EPs and Videos of FKA Twigs

FKA Twigs is a mixed-race, tawny-skinned 26-year-old singer and dancer from rural Gloucestershire, England; her real name is Tahlia Barnett, and her old nickname was Twigs, hence “Formerly Known as Twigs.” Her music, on two EPs released in the space of a little more than a year, is tremulous and slow and commanding, with eerie barren stretches. (The second EP was produced by Arca, who worked on Kanye West’s “Yeezus.”) The methodical, strangely placed stresses of the beats signify a lot: isolation, displacement, missed connections. Something of interest — a little burst of rhythm or a bending, decaying electronic tone — occurs in nearly every bar. There’s some deconstructed, first-generation drum-and-bass in there, and Portishead and mid-period Madonna, too; she seizes on and transforms some drowsy energies in early-’90s pop.

She has possibly played fewer shows than she has songs — a situation that might soon change. But for seven of those eight songs FKA Twigs has released striking, clean, strong-concept videos, viewable on her Tumblr site. Extraordinary body-oriented things happen in them, sexual by metaphor or atmosphere, and only partly connected to the mechanics of the songs; the action seems to float in elegant silence.

Photo

FKA Twigs has released two EPs of slow, compelling songs and seven striking videos that seem only partly connected to her music.Credit
Jamie James Medina

“Papi Pacify,” from September, is the most imposing example of her musical-visual concept yet. Its lyrics settle on the words “pacify” and “justify”; its video portrays her and a darker-skinned man in slowed-down, backward-and-forward looping segments of black-and-white footage, making tandem gestures of domination and submission: He’s putting his fingers in her mouth and has his fingers around her neck, but she comes to look toward the camera with a sense of control.

That film was followed by a much more light-filled one, in which the visuals really did follow the music. On New Year’s Eve, Young Turks — an imprint of XL Recordings — gave a party in Tulum, Mexico, and FKA Twigs performed her song “Hide” in an abandoned Maya structure during daylight hours, with a backing guitarist and drummer. It was filmed, of course. She dances slowly as she sings, arms raised and hips in jerky-fluid motions outside of rhythm, in a weirdly perfect illustration of the song’s mood and insistent ticktock sounds.

Can this exist onstage, or even on record in greater quantities? Does it matter? Could this prove the idea that it is enough for a singer to live mostly on film, outside of performances and album cycles? Probably, yes, for a time. (But what is time? And doesn’t FKA Twigs operate parallel to it, as with those hip motions?) She is said by her label, XL, to be working on a full-length album and there are unconfirmed possibilities of her first American live performances in the spring. Stay tuned.

A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2014, on Page AR23 of the New York edition with the headline: So Far, a Chanteuse Mainly for the Camera. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe